Turkey and Egypt: a dead relationship
In 2013, with General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi's arrival on the throne of Cairo, relations between Egypt and Turkey began to deteriorate. The reason? The overthrow of the former leader of the African country, Mohamed Morsi, who was linked to the Muslim Brothers, an Egyptian-based organisation that seeks to destabilise his native country and which, for this task among many others, is currently being supported by Ankara and other players such as Qatar. Now, the disagreements between the two administrations are such that the wear and tear seems irreversible.
One of the latest episodes in which the tension between the two states has taken shape has been reported by the organisation Nordic Monitor, which specialises in tracking phenomena such as terrorism and extremism. According to the website, Hasan Dogan, the head of the Turkish Presidency office, headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, "had bet on chaos in Egypt after Morsi's departure, following the popular revolution of July 3, 2013". "According to secret telephone tapping obtained by Nordic Monitor, Erdogan's chief of staff said: 'By God, I predict that this [Morsi's expulsion] will lead to an explosion, a bigger and more dynamic change in Egypt in three to five years', the publication reveals. The organisation refers to telephone conversations between Dogan and Osama Qutb, the nephew of Egyptian cleric Sayyid Qutb, one of the founders of the Brotherhood, on July 4, 2013, a day after the revolution. "They both lamented the events in Egypt, admitted how disheartened they were and tried to comfort each other," reports Nordic Monitor. "Dogan made a comparison between the expulsion of the Turkish political Islamists in the late 1990s and what happened to Morsi, arguing that the Brotherhood in Egypt would make a great comeback just as the Islamists did with Erdogan a few years later," the report continues.
Al-Ain added, citing observers, that it is possible that "Erdogan led and supported a plan to overthrow the Egyptian state after his terrorist group was toppled from power in mid-2013 [...] He opened his country to shelter fleeing leaders of terrorist organisations and also to support armed groups that worked to create chaos afterwards".
In practice, this has meant, for example, that Turkey has provided the Muslim Brotherhood with both material and logistical support and an "incubator for leaders of extremism and terrorism to develop plans to attack Egypt and finance it from abroad," according to Islamic thinker Tharwat Al-Kharbawi in Al-Ain. The analyst also says that a meeting of the Brotherhood's international leaders was held at the end of 2013 to establish a roadmap facilitating the group's return to activity in Egypt, with measures such as attacking state institutions or directing attacks against security forces, something that has plagued the African country in recent years. In fact, the Cairo Executive has intensified anti-terrorist operations to curb the spread of Islamism in the country. The last one took place a couple of weeks ago, when seven alleged extremists and a military man were killed in a maneuver against a cell based in the El Amiriya neighborhood in the capital. The Ministry of the Interior announced at the time that "in view of the curfew ordered by the Government to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the alleged terrorists decided to change their plans and attack the security forces".
Along with the Brotherhood's networks, Wilayat Sina, one of the subsidiaries of the Daesh jihadist group based on the Sinai peninsula, also operates on Egyptian soil.
The open civil war in Libya since 2011, in which the Government of National Unity (GNA), led by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj, and the National Liberation Army (LNA), led by Marshal Khalifa Haftar, are facing each other, has become a real battleground for the international powers, which are fighting in the North African country to impose their interests against the rivals.
In this scenario, Turkey supports the GNA, sending Syrian mercenaries and even military personnel -just as in Syria-, while Egypt opts for the LNA, along with other Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or Jordan. Although Ankara and Cairo are not directly in conflict, their tension has led to a 'proxy' or subsidiary war, such as the one being fought in the Mediterranean. Last March, the Middle East Eye revealed that Egypt was working to establish an Arab security alliance to "counter the growing influence of Turkish President Erdogan. The country's intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, embarked on a tour of Sudan, Algeria and Morocco to gather support. Al Araby later revealed that Cairo and the LNA had reached an agreement to "prevent Turkish ships from delivering aid to the GNA".
The Egyptian representative to the United Nations has also repeatedly condemned how Turkey violates Security Council resolutions by deploying foreign fighters in Libya, to whom it pays "between 1,500 and 2,000 dollars a month. Similarly, it has accused Ankara of transferring Daesh jihadists from Syria to the North African country to join the ranks of the GNA.
Another point of contention is the gas discovered in the eastern part of Mare Nostrum. While Egypt recently founded the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), with Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Turkey reached a military and maritime agreement with the Libyan Sarrah government designing new borders that would allow Ankara to exploit EMGF reserves.
It should be stressed here that the tense differences between the two countries in these disputes not only affect them, but also have direct implications for regional stability. "With the Libyan conflict becoming a flashpoint between the two countries, the dispute could trigger another refugee crisis in Europe, disrupt maritime trade in the Mediterranean and lead to a resurgence of Daesh in Libya," warned analyst Nicholas Saidel recently in the Wall Street Journal.
In the country that currently represents the world's largest humanitarian crisis - with more than 20 million people in need of urgent assistance - relations between Turkey and Egypt have also been affected. "Ankara's growing presence in Yemen, especially in the troubled southern region [where the Southern Transitional Council claims greater autonomy], is fuelling security concerns in Egypt over the Red Sea and the Suez Canal," analyst Amr Eman told The Arab Weekly.
In this article, expert Mahmoud al-Tahrir is quoted as warning that "Turkey has an interest in inciting the Muslim Brotherhood and giving them more power on the Yemeni stage", since "the local Islah party [founded in 1990] is essential for Turkish institutions and the Turkish government, disguised as charity organisations, to gain access to Yemeni cities". In fact, as the publication states, in mid-January, Turkish deputy interior minister Ismail Catakli visited Aden. The official reason for the trip was to prepare a "report on humanitarian needs in Yemen", but analysts fear that it was actually intended to increase the Turkish military presence in the country, which gives it direct access to the Red Sea, where "Ankara is working hard to become a power," according to Eman. He recalls that the Eurasian nation already has bases in Djibouti, Somalia and Suakin (Sudan).
"Turkey is looking at Yemen's Red Sea ports and the ports near the strait only to put pressure on Egypt," says analyst Abdel Karim al-Medi in The Arab Weekly.
In the face of Turkey's claims, the country led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has not stood idly by. On January 15, practically coinciding with Catakli's visit to Yemen, the Berenice military base, the largest facility of its kind in the Middle East, was inaugurated. The objective? "To protect the country's southern border, protect economic investments and natural resources in the area, address security challenges and ensure global shipping traffic across the Red Sea to the Suez Canal and related economic zones," declared Egyptian government spokesman Bassam Rady at the time.
Al-Sisi was already strengthening his country's position in the region in 2018: "We will not accept that Yemen becomes a springboard for threatening the security and stability of Arab countries or the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea or the Bab el-Mandeb Strait," he said during a press conference with Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi. Although he may not have been referring directly to Turkey then, his words are now more valuable than ever.
With these hotbeds of conflict open, the discrepancies between Al-Sisi and Erdogan do seem irreconcilable, as mentioned above. "While Turkey considers the Middle East as its backyard for exercising hegemony and influence, Egypt believes that the Turkish role is a source of confusion and instability and should therefore be eliminated," concludes analyst Khalil al-Anani at the Arab Center in Washington DC (AWC).